Slow boot times

I've recently noticed my boot times are being very long for the system (it used to be about 30 seconds, now it's about 2 minutes !). I ran bootvis to do a trace and see what was happening, and it turns out that the driver mrxsmb.sys takes 71 seconds to load. However, from the other displays in bootvis for that period of time the CPU usage was often 0 %, never topping about 10 %, and the hard disk wasn't doing a thing. From the internet I've figured out that this driver is something to do with networking, but I can't find out exactly what. This probably seems really petty, but it's annoying me SO much ! Any help would really be appreciated... In case it's helpful I've attached a screenshot of the bootvis display... I think it explains itself.

 

what ur hardware specs? look like u have alot program running background, maybe that why it takes awhile to load.

 

Hardware:

Dell 8250 model
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
2.5 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor
512MB RAM
Intel Pro/100M network card
128 DDR ATI Radeon 9700 TX w/TV-Out
DVD-ROM & CD-RW

I've checked the running processes... 49 of them... which seems a lot... how can I find out which ones are unnecessary, or even find out what they actually do ?

 

try this

One thing you might want to try start/run type msconfig
the window that comes up uncheck normal startup load all drivers, you want selective start. at the top of that window go to the startup and uncheck all the program you dont want to load at reboot. Over time when you dowload programs some of them like to get in your face sort to speak this will slow your bootup this works for me most the time

 

Also (and no offense I promise) by the look of your shiny interface, it appears your system may not be optimized for speed. There are loads and loads of processes and doo-dads that install with XP that can be shut down or removed. XP is the first OS I've ever used that my tweaked install is actually faster than a nice, fresh install. The Black Viper site is a great place to start.

I think that mrxsmb is a process for a domain controller to be loading. The boot time is almost surely due to it FILLING up your logs with activity and finally giving up. You might have a look at your logs to confirm this.

G'luck!

spaz

 

That's a nice guide, Mastertech... thanks for posting it.

 

I finally have found the solution to the slow boot. When I logged on, the desktop background appeared but no icons appeared for seconds and seconds. Tracing it with bootvis also pointed mrxsmb for the delay. My event log filled up with Event ID 3019 " The redirector failed to determine the connection type". The delay was caused by a network drive that was mapped to a drive letter. After I removed the mapped drive letter, the delay was gone.

Greetz

 

I know you are correct and mapping drives slows down the system. The only problem is that I need mapped drives. I live off of my server and my other computers in my house do as well. Our email, music, photos, documents, and many other vital files live on a computer which is running all the time--and it has other things like a web server, email server, camera server, etc. My point is that I want speed and mapped drives. Here is a REALLY big question: I just formatted my computer. It has 2 Raid 0 drives that have 2 120gb each. I made this into 6 partitions. One for ea: windows, swap, temp, program, and then two data drives with the remaining few hundred gigs. When my comp shows the XP logo, it takes forever! Another comp I have, which is 667mhz CELERON!! shows the XP screen for EXACTLY 5 seconds. No kidding! I achieved this by disabling unnecesary features such as the parallel, serial, and game port. This is simply amazing. That computer has a slow processor, one eighth the memory, hardly anything for a hard drive (one 40gb), !! My comp takes about 25 seconds on the XP screen, but that is a guess...all I know is that it takes a long time. Before I had the mapped drive, this time was the same, but the time from first appearance w/ mouse to desktop completely booted went way up! Before, this time was about 5 seconds, but now it is at least 15 seconds.

 

"The only problem is that I need mapped drives."

You don't need mapped drives. It is much better to use "My Network Places" (or "Network Neighborhood in Win98") instead. If you need to connect to something, such as a printer or a drive on another computer, use the network name. Some examples: //desk/c; //jayscomputer/d; "//192.168.0.15/c/shared docs" (quotes needed if there are spaces in the name). You can use My Network Places to browse for other computers much the same as browsing mapped drives (My Network Places even shows up in Windows Explorer). One advantage of this is that you can see all resources on your network without having to map it first!